Soldier Of Fortune Expo Defies Convention

September 21, 1986|By James Coates, Chicago Tribune.

LAS VEGAS — Enrique Bermudez, military commander of the Nicaraguan contras so strongly backed by President Reagan, stood near a craps table here and told how he had turned to ``Robert K.`` when Congress balked at aiding his fight against the Sandinistas.

``Robert K. was very much our friend when we needed a friend,``

Bermudez said as Col. Robert K. Brown, editor and publisher of Soldier of Fortune magazine, gave an ``aw shucks`` shrug.

Then Brown pinched some snuff out of the camouflage-painted can he keeps tucked in the knee-high socks that go with his Rhodesian-style military shorts, and he grinned.

With $100 million in U.S. aid now on its way to the contras, Bermudez said he was in town to thank Brown for his past ``private-sector help`` and to urge Americans to continue private support of his army`s efforts to topple the leftist Nicaraguan government.

The occasion was the six-day 7th Annual Convention and Combat Arms Exposition, which runs through Sunday, of the ardently anticommunist Soldier of Fortune magazine, America`s leading publication for self-styled

mercenaries, military hardware fans and war lovers.

``We always have our conventions in Las Vegas instead of spreading them around the country because we need the wide-open deserts around town to fire our weapons,`` Brown said.

Convention sessions include trips to the desert to fire the latest-model submachine guns and pistols, and contests such as rappeling down cliffs in full combat gear. The convention was set to end with a knife- fighting class on the roof of the Sahara Hotel`s parking garage.

The combat-weapons show is where sellers of military items as exotic as poison-dart blow guns and as crude as night sticks display their wares, sell their right-wing literature and swap war stories.

Exhibitors include major weapons companies that produce Uzi submachine guns, Heckler and Koch rifles and Ruger pistols--not to mention the Smith and Wesson line of ready-to-shoot.

Last year, the show drew about 5,000 conventioneers and vacationing tourists. ``This year we`re putting on a show that`s 20 percent bigger,``

boasted Brown, who is viewed by some as the Hugh Hefner of the camouflage set. Each year virtually the entire list of ``Who`s Who`` among the country`s hard-line anticommunists joins the irrepressible Brown to discuss strategy and compete against one another with pugil sticks, knives, guns and other tools of the freelance commando`s trade.

They also swap notes, recruit one another for the coming year`s projects and, as Brown puts it, ``share camaraderie.``

Among those attending the convention is Jim Kent, third-in-command of the Alabama-based Civilian Materiel Assistance (CMA), a group that provides medical supplies and food for the Nicaraguan rebels.

This summer, CMA`s Arizona chapter conducted freelance military maneuvers along the Mexican border and captured a dozen people, including women and children, trying to enter the U.S. illegally.

Kent said Bermudez and Mario Calero, the contras` procurement chief, asked him at the convention to switch CMA`s donations from supplies for troops to providing aid to Nicaraguan refugee camps now that the U.S. aid package has been approved.

Also attending the convention is Gen. John Singlaub, former commander of the U.S. troops in Korea and founder of the Colorado-based World Anti-Communist League, which has raised millions of dollars to support U.S.-backed forces in Central America and Afghanistan.

In an interview, Calero praised Brown`s group for creating a global underground network among ``freedom fighters`` whereby they share supplies and join together to get volume discounts.

He recalled, for example, how Brown`s negotiators got a deal on field radios for $600 instead of the $1,200 list price.

``We bought some, and the Afghans bought some,`` Calero said.

Since 1981, Brown, by his own admission, has skirted the outer bounds of the U.S. Neutrality Act with his various projects and schemes to aid those he calls ``freedom fighters``--everyone from the Kirin guerrillas in Burma to the Afghan mujahideen fighting Soviet invasion forces at the Kybur Pass.

That law forbids Americans to fight in foreign armies or to recruit others to fight abroad.

Brown maintains a 27,000-square-foot warehouse in Boulder, Colo., the magazine`s home base, where he collects military surplus gear donated by his readers--primarily Vietnam and post-Vietnam-era veterans--for shipment to the contras and the Afghan rebels.

Brown acknowledged that the supply operation continually is under suspicion as being a front for the Central Intelligence Agency. The CIA had covertly aided the contras until Congress blocked funding.

``I can assure you that the company (CIA) has no use for Robert K. Brown,`` Brown himself said. ``There is nothing clandestine in what we`re doing.``

Nonetheless, what Brown is doing proved so important to the Nicaraguan rebel forces that their commanding military leader left the field to stand at Brown`s side.